President Truman holds the Torah presented to him by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, May 25, 1948 (Photo: Bettmann Corbis)

Why are American Jews abandoning the Obama administration in such large ways lately? Following the news this year, you would never know that over 800 rockets and mortars were fired into Israel from the Gaza Strip? The WSJ weighed in yesterday with two op-eds on Israel. This first excerpt is from one entitled, Israel Under Fire:

If this incoming fire were landing in Texas from Mexico—or in southern Spain from North Africa—it would be a major story. Instead, the world has largely ignored the attacks while obsessing over a possible Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Iran is a principal arms supplier to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which operates out of Gaza and is responsible for many of the recent attacks. Iran’s war against Israel, in other words, has long been underway.

Could it be that President Obama simply does not care? That is my position. But hey, I’m not Jewish and I’m not the POTUS, so my opinion doesn’t really matter much at all. But a prominent Jewish American’s opinion matters. For those who don’t know this fact, Sheldon Adelson was a major contributor to the Gingrich campaign and later to Romney for their policy positions on the state of Israel. Mr. Adelson penned a great opinion piece in the Journal entitled, I Didn’t Leave the Democrats. They Left Me — Excerpts:

When members of the Democratic Party booed the inclusion of God and Jerusalem in their party platform this year, I thought of my parents.

They would have been astounded.
…
So why did I leave the party?

My critics nowadays like to claim it’s because I got wealthy or because I didn’t want to pay taxes or because of some other conservative caricature. No, the truth is the Democratic Party has changed in ways that no longer fit with someone of my upbringing.

One obvious example is the party’s new attitude toward Israel. A sobering Gallup poll from last March asked: “Are your sympathies more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians?” Barely 53% of Democrats chose Israel, the sole liberal democracy in the region. By contrast, an overwhelming 78% of Republicans sympathized with Israel.

Nowhere was this change in Democratic sympathies more evident than in the chilling reaction on the floor of the Democratic convention in September when the question of Israel’s capital came up for a vote. Anyone who witnessed the delegates’ angry screaming and fist-shaking could see that far more is going on in the Democratic Party than mere opposition to citing Jerusalem in their platform. There is now a visceral anti-Israel movement among rank-and-file Democrats, a disturbing development that my parents’ generation would not have ignored.

President Truman holds the Torah presented to him by Dr. Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, May 25, 1948.

Another troubling change is that Democrats seem to have moved away from the immigrant values of my old neighborhood—in particular, individual charity and neighborliness. After studying tax data from the IRS, the nonpartisan Chronicle of Philanthropy recently reported that states that vote Republican are now far more generous to charities than those voting Democratic. In 2008, the seven least-generous states all voted for President Obama. My father, who kept a charity box for the poor in our house, would have frowned on this fact about modern Democrats.
…
Take, for example, President Obama’s adopted home state. In October, a nonpartisan study of Illinois’s finances by the State Budget Crisis Task Force offered painful evidence that liberal Illinois is suffering from abject economic, demographic and social decline. With the worst credit rating in the country, and with the second-biggest public debt per capita, the Prairie State “has been doing back flips on a high wire, without a net,” according to the report.

Political scientist Walter Russell Mead summed up the sad results of these findings at The American Interest: “Illinois politicians, including the present president of the United States, have wrecked one of the country’s potentially most prosperous and dynamic states, condemned millions of poor children to substandard education, failed to maintain vital infrastructure, choked business development and growth through unsustainable tax and regulatory policies—and still failed to appease the demands of the public sector unions and fee-seeking Wall Street crony capitalists who make billions off the state’s distress.”

At times, it seems almost as if President Obama wants to impose the failed Illinois model on the whole country. Each year of his presidency has produced unsustainable deficits, and he takes no responsibility for his spending.
…Whenever President Obama deplores the wealthy (“fat-cat bankers,” “millionaires and billionaires,” “at a certain point you’ve made enough money,” and so on), it tells me that he has failed to learn the economic lessons of Illinois, and that he still doesn’t understand the vital role entrepreneurs play in creating jobs in our society.

As a person who has been able to rise from poverty to affluence, and who has created jobs and work benefits for tens of thousands of families, I feel obligated to speak up and support the American ideals I grew up with—charity, self-reliance, accountability. These are the age-old virtues that help make our communities prosperous. Yet, sadly, the Democratic Party no longer seems to value them as it once did. That’s why I switched parties, and why I’m now giving amply to Republicans.

Although I don’t agree with every Republican position—I’m liberal on several social issues—there is enough common cause with the party for me to know I’ve made the right choice.

It’s the choice that, I believe, my old immigrant Jewish neighbors would have made. They would not have let a few disagreements with Republicans void the importance of siding with the political party that better supports liberal democracies like Israel, the party that better exemplifies the spirit of charity, and the party with economic policies that would certainly be better for those Americans now looking for work.

The Democratic Party just isn’t what it used to be.
[emphasis added]

American Values: “In God We Trust” — “Liberty” — “E Pluribus Unum”

Twitter Follow: @VicLundquist– Dedicated to all members of The United States military and their families

The shocking revelation that the Democratic Party had removed any reference to “God” in their platform has been stepping all over the messaging party leaders wanted coming out of their Convention in Charlotte. Their problems didn’t stop there … they also removed essentially all “pro-Israel” language, including an omission of a long-standing position of BOTH parties that Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of Israel. I’m sure the phones started burning over these points as media coverage was dominated by “WHY?” these were omitted. No good answers were provided (maybe because they don’t exist?). Spin and damage control ensued as will be detailed below, but what must be kept in mind is that OBAMA APPROVED THOSE PLATFORM CHANGES BEFORE THE CONVENTION.

Obama had seen the language prior to the convention, a campaign source said, but did not seek to change it until after Republicans jumped on the omissions of God and Jerusalem late Wednesday. And even then, it had to be forced through a convention hall full of delegates who nearly shouted down the change.

Headline on DrudgeReport.com on afternoon of Sept 5, 2012

Video of Democrats boo-ing addition of “God” and “Israel” into platform (Very bad optics … I can see the commercials being produced already).

It’s obvious that they didn’t have the 2/3 majority required and EVERYONE realized it. The Democratic party is in shambles, without a strong and effective leader at the helm.

The natives are restless … Huffington Post led with the original headline : “Pushover Party: Dems Cave; Re-insert “God” and “Jerusalem” into Platform.”

There is no doubt in my mind that Obama managed to lose BOTH Jewish AND Muslim votes through this debacle … That’s hard to do! Not only that, but, he also motivated the Christian base and gave them one more reason to get out and vote Obama out of office.

So WHY did these removed points get added back? Obama reversed himself and had it added back.

So, we’re left with two possible conclusions. Either:

1) Obama is incompetent and didn’t vet/read the Platform that he approved …

or

2) Obama really wanted those points removed (and is therefore “Anti-God” and “Anti-Israel), but caved to political and donor pressure and had them added back, against his core beliefs …

Typically, those of the Jewish faith vote Democratic. Recent polls show that 65% voted Democratic in the last election.

However, I believe that Romney could do quite well with the Jewish vote not only because both are religious minorities and may feel connected as such, but also because of Romney’s personal friendship with Israel’s prime-minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

The New York Times released a groundbreaking article about the nearly 40 year friendship between Romney and Netanyahu. According to the article, the two met in 1976 at Bain and Company and now understand each other so well that they can practically “speak in code.”

The article goes on to say that it is very rare to have two high profile leaders of different countries with such a long history. This friendship could be very consequential in upcoming years as Israel considers war with Iran for its nuclear weapons program.

Netanyahu has said that he remains neutral in America’s presidential election, but I think if he had to choose between President Obama and his friend Mitt Romney, he would choose his friend over Obama. I am sure that Netanyahu is not very favorably inclined to Obama these days due to many reasons, but most recently because of Obama’s “hot mic gaffe” where Obama bemoaned that he had to “work with Netanyahu everyday” to President Sarkozy of France.